There is significant demand from institutional users in this area, including from universities, colleges, high schools and other schools, hospitals, prisons and other comparable large-scale institutional uses. Such users often will benefit from direct power generation on an “avoided cost model” (where the cost of generation will be the cost of utility supplied power) and often have attractive financing methods available to them.

B – Small Local Utility Companies

Use of the Freedom100 offers small local utilities the ability to at least partially replace wholesale power sources with their own sources of power generation. In many parts of the United States, particularly the rural United States there are many small local utilities. For example, in the state of Iowa alone, there are 137 municipally owned utilities. Local control of power generation can be attractive to these entities, and in certain cases may be useful in helping to satisfy various governmental mandates for the use of alternative energy.

C – Small Corporate Users

One of the largest possible target markets would be small and large corporate users who are seeking to (i) provide some redundancy for grid provided electricity, and/or (ii) control utility electricity costs on a long-term basis. Coupled with possible use of energy investment tax credits and available accelerated depreciation, use of Freedom 100 generated power on an avoided cost basis will be an attractive method for reducing electricity usage costs. These users are often interested in mini-grids or micro-grids, which are autonomous from, or can be separated from, the main utility grid.

D – High Usage Corporate Farming Operations

There is high interest among corporate farm owners, particularly those who have intensive energy needs (for example, chicken farms), in utilizing wind energy solutions for all of the same reasons noted above with respect to corporate users generally.

E – Wind Gardens in Rural Towns and Villages

We believe that there are a substantial number of small rural towns and villages in the United States that have moderate wind speed environments and sufficient electricity demand to support a 1 to 10 MW (each of which would require ten to a hundred Freedom 100 wind turbines). Over time, we have been contacted by a number of developers seeking to pursue this concept.

F – Department of Defense and Other Federal Energy Uses

There are significant opportunities for supply of Freedom 100 turbines for Department of Defense, Homeland Security and other federal agency requirements. The Department of Defense has announced its commitment to deploy three gigawatts of renewable energy on Army, Air Force and Navy installations by 2025 (one gigawatt by 2016), with renewable energy providing 50% of the energy needs for these bases.

G – Foreign Wind Energy Applications Generally

Large portions of the developing world in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East have inadequate electrical power infrastructure and/or very high electricity costs due to the lack of appropriate utility grid infrastructure and/or inadequate traditional electricity generation sources. Because the Freedom 100 wind turbine is of relatively small scale, has a modest per unit cost (in comparison to utility scale wind turbines), is designed to operate in moderate wind speed environments and is compatible with microgrid use – it has potential application in large portions of the developing world. This is particularly true in the many foreign markets that have significantly higher electricity rates than the United States. Heartland Energy Solutions has already received several inquiries about use of the Freedom 100 in foreign locales.

H – The European Small Commercial Wind Market

There continues to be a very active market in the United Kingdom and Europe, generally for the installation of small commercial wind turbines. The cost effectiveness of the Freedom 100 should make it a highly competitive product in these markets.

I – Distributed Energy Applications in the Wind Power Alley of the United States

The “Wind Power Alley” in the United States is a geographically broad area starting with Texas in the south and running up through most of the Great Plains States that has a very high concentration of moderate to high wind speeds. This is a particularly lucrative (and largely unserved) marketing area for DISTRIBUTED WIND ENERGY APPLICATIONS. Some of these applications include the following:

Meeting the Promise of Distributed Energy

DISTRIBUTED ENERGY generally means energy generated from local, smaller, distributed sources and most often is either not dependent on the utility power grid, or is less dependent on the grid. In comparison, utility grid power is highly dependent on large, concentrated sources of electricity generation.

DISTRIBUTED ENERGY can be highly attractive to some individual users due to the possibility of reducing the risk of grid outages and other problems, of providing energy redundancy, and of possibly providing locally generated power on a lower cost basis. For this reason, interest in DISTRIBUTED ENERGY is growing rapidly.

Traditionally the need for higher wind speeds create barriers for the use of conventional wind turbines in DISTRIBUTED ENERGY APPLICATIONS. Higher wind speeds are generally found in only a very limited number of locations (which are often quite remote from the end user) and can often require height and scale on a basis that can be inconsistent with other uses. An overwhelming share of wind energy produced in the United States is on very large wind farms often separated by long distances from the end user. The large wind farm model is thus usually the opposite of a distributed energy model.

In contrast, the Freedom 100 is unusually well suited for DISTRIBUTED ENERGY APPLICATIONS. It uses a tower height and a scale which is much more consistent (than utility wind farm scale turbines) for use in small communities and adjacent to individual users. Most importantly, it is highly productive at lower wind speeds, which means that it can be locally sited for DISTRIBUTED ENERGY APPLICATIONS in a vastly larger number of geographic locations.